Still in San Francisco; just did something relatively interesting though - did a quick tour through PDI: Pacific Data Images, located in Palo Alto, California (aka, Silicon Valley). PDI are best known for their work on the movie Antz, which they made from the ground up. It was pretty successful, scoring something like $200 million dollars at the box office. They also have done a few other noteworthy things, one of them being the 3d Simpsons scene in that Halloween Episode of the Simpsons.

Currently, they're working on a new movie, called Shreck (and in the backburner whilst Shreck is being finalised they have another movie called Tusker). From their website:

Once upon a time there lived a cynical, no-nonsense ogre named Shrek whose swamp was overrun by annoying fairytale creatures -- the usual mice, pigs and wolves that plague storybooks everywhere. In an attempt to save his home, Shrek sets out to confront Lord Farquaad, ruler of Duloc, who has banished all the fairytale misfits from Duloc in order to create his own perfect world. Along the way, Shrek is befriended by a wise-cracking donkey, sent to slay a fire-breathing dragon and save a beautiful princess with a deep, dark secret...just your usual fairytale stuff. In the end, he learns to love and be loved in this irreverent new comedy from the creators of "Antz."

I was at PDI last year and saw a few similar things, but now 18 months down the track Shreck is a lot closer to completion. Looks like most of the modelling, animation and lighting has been completed, as well as a lot of the voices (which include Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers as the voice of Shreck).

Walking around PDI is pretty awesome - there's storyboards EVERYWHERE, as well as stacks of individual concept art that is really impressive. Unfortunately I can't talk too much about the content, but the trailer for the movie is either out now or coming out soon, so you'll be able to see it for yourself.

Also took a quick trip into their server room, which now hosts something like 1,000 processors, all mainly used for rendering and other stuff like that. Extremely impressive - racks and racks and racks of Linux boxes, giant racks full to the brim of RAID arrays, and an uber Origin 2000 system from SGI with an awesome LCD display on it so you could monitor the load on its 16 or so processors externally.

Unfortunately, they didn't let me take any pictures or anything (and they confiscated all the storyboards and artwork and models that I tried to steal when I walked out). Anyway, PDI is a pretty impressive place, and Shreck looks like its going to be a very impressive movie, so keep an eye out.

the trailer looks good. the lighting and shadows look awesome. trailer is at www.shrek.com and its 15.8 meg for the decent one
and when is someone gonna help me with some linkifying action

refer to cerb's html thread

ta and now ive just gotta find it
you dint put a link in for me ;)

um sif i have an idea of wht im doin